It is likely that there are currently millions of miles of conduits buried under ground, which conduits carry one or more communications cables. Typically these cables are housed in plastic innerducts positioned in the conduit. The purpose of these innerducts is to protect a cable when an additional cable might be installed in the same conduit. In addition, it is easier to install the additional cables if they too are in separate innerducts.
There comes a time, however, when the conduit is essentially filled with innerducts and no more cables can be installed therein. Such a situation is shown in FIG. 1A where a conduit 10 is filled with innerducts 11, each of which are carrying a live or active cable 12. These innerducts cannot readily be removed because, to date, the only known way to do so would be to sever a cable, which cannot be done if it is an active cable. As such, if additional communications cables are needed in that geographical area, a new conduit must be buried in the ground which is a very labor intensive, time-consuming, and expensive project.
Thus, the need exists to recover the space in a conduit which is being taken up by one or more innerducts so that additional cables can be installed in the existing conduit.